«Вибрані поезії» Володимира Сосюри – добірка віршів, до якої увійшли найвідоміші поезії автора, які представляють собою поєднання громадянських, філософських та інтимних мотивів***. Світову славу письменнику принесли поезії «Любіть Україну», «Так ніхто не кохав», «Білі акації будуть цвісти», «Васильки», «Іще не скресла крига на Дніпрі», «Зима», «Коли потяг у даль загуркоче», «Люблю весну, та хто її не любить». Володимир Сосюра – український поет-лірик, автор понад 40 збірок поезій, роману «Третя рота», козак Армії УНР, член літературних організацій «Плуг» та «Гарт».
Volodymyr Sosiura fought in Petliura's Ukrainian People's Army (the 3rd Haidamaka Regiment that was quartered in Bakhmut) during the winter of 1918 to the autumn of 1919, before being taken prisoner by Denikin's Volunteer Army. He was sentenced to death, but managed to escape. Later, after the UPR was overrun, he joined the Red Army.
After the Russian Civil War in Ukraine ended (see Ukraine after Russian Revolution), he studied at the Artem Communist University in Kharkiv from 1922–23, then at the workers' faculty of the Public Education Institute (Kharkiv) from 1923-25. Sosiura belonged to the Ukrainian literary organizations Pluh, Hart, VAPLITE, and the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers.
In the 1920s-30s Sosiura became very popular, but his ideological loyalties were torn between patriotic feelings for Ukraine and those for the Soviet Union and its often-changing ideologies. Even though he had long been a member of the CPU(b), he was frequently in conflict with it, and was twice expelled for “nationalistic undertones,” he was even forced to undergo a “reeducation” at a factory in 1930-1931. Many of Sosiura's poems were not published.
In 1948 he was awarded the highest honors of the Stalin Prize, but then he came under harsh criticism for his poem entitled Love Ukraine (Любіть Україну), which was deemed too nationalistic in its tone by several Soviet news-media including Pravda. Afterwards his wife was arrested and spent six years in NKVD prisons. In 1963, he won the Shevchenko Prize for Swallows on the sun and Happiness of a working family.